Should it really set NODE_ENV=production?

[henrik]

Thank you so much for this project! Helped me out immensely.

I had some issues deploying to Netlify after adding a plugin, and realised it's because the plugin said to use --save-dev, but Eleventail sets NODE_ENV=production:

eleventail/netlify.toml

Line 7 in acb2d47

environment = { NODE_VERSION = "10.15.3", NODE_ENV = "production" }

It seems the Eleventy convention might be to use dev dependencies, relying on deploys to be NODE_ENV=development.

Just thought I'd

1. check if there's any particular reason for NODE_ENV=production, to learn
2. suggest changing it so other noobs like me might avoid problems, if not :)

[kaeside]

Hey @henrik ,

I'm new to this as well 😂

I think it is set to production for build purposes. In Eleventail, purging and css optimization is done only when you are running the command netlify build.

I've seen this in a few other 11ty based templates that use Netlify for deployments.

The Netlify toml file contains a production context that will point to the production environment when you are running any command that isn't netlify dev.

Running netlify dev sets the node_env to be development thus overriding the production context.

# netlify.toml

[build]
  command = "npm run build"
  publish = "dist"
  # functions = "./src/functions"

[context.production]
  environment = { NODE_VERSION = "10.15.3", NODE_ENV = "production" }


[dev]
  command = "npm run start"
  framework = "#custom"
  publish = "dist"
  port = 3000
  targetPort = 8181
  NODE_ENV = "development"
  # functionsPort = 34567

[[redirects]]
  from = "/post/*"
  to = "/blog/:splat"

This is done because in the postcss.config.json we're purging the css as well as applying optimizations using cssnano.

Optionally, you could remove the purgecss from the postcss.config.json and place it into tailwind.confg.json as tailwind has purgecss built in.

// postcss.config.json 
module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    require('tailwindcss'),
    require('autoprefixer'),
    ...process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production' ? [purgecss,  require('cssnano')] : []
  ]
};

See here: https://tailwindcss.com/docs/controlling-file-size

In our case the tailwind config would look something like this:

// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
  purge: [
    ./src/site/**/*.njk',
  ],
  theme: {},
  variants: {},
  plugins: [],
}